Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

“Go and shut yourself in your house!” the Lord said. “And then, man, they must bind you fast with ropes, so that you cannot get out among people. Your tongue will be fastened to the roof of your mouth, so you will be speechless and cannot rebuke them. For they are rebellious. But when I speak to you, I will open your mouth. Then you shall say to them: This is the word of the Lord: he who wants to listen may listen, but he who does not want to does not have to. For they are rebellious.”

And the Lord continued.

“Man, take a tile and place it before you! On it you shall draw a city, Jerusalem. You shall surround the city, build earthworks around it, and put up a rampart around it. Let armies lay siege to the city and set up battering rams on all sides of it. Then take an iron griddle and place it like a wall of iron between you and the city, and turn your face to the city. In this way it will be surrounded, and you will attack it. This will be a sign to the Israelites.”

Ezekiel was given many other tasks out there on the plain, and he carried out all of them punctiliously. When he arrived back at Tel Aviv at daybreak, he got two men from the town to accompany him into his house, tie him up, and then lock the door from the outside, so that it was quite impossible for him to get out until the Lord willed it.

It may seem strange that the men obeyed him in this, but Ezekiel was their priest, and his behavior over the past few days had engendered respect and even fear: after his experience by the River Kebar, he’d sat among them for a week, rocking back and forth clasping his knees, without speaking or eating, filthy and thin, with an expression that got wilder and more intense with each day that passed. They knew he was possessed, and that it was the word of the Lord that had possessed him. A number of people had seen him leaving the town in the middle of the night, and they had all noticed that he was talking to himself, and that his gait had been stilted like a sleepwalker’s. Two brothers had actually followed him, but when they’d caught sight of the undulating glow of light in the sky, they’d dared go no farther but immediately hurried back to the town to tell of what they’d seen. So there was quite a crowd waiting at the city gate when he returned at dawn, and no one questioned the strange request he made of them.

“Two of you must fetch a rope and tie me up in my house,” he said. “And then you’re to lock the door from the outside and leave.”

For some reason he picked the two brothers who’d followed him. Presumably there was something about their attentiveness that distinguished them from the crowd in his subconscious, so that the choice was automatic, but for the others present it was a sign. Several of them sent each other meaningful looks. Although Ezekiel could neither have seen nor heard anything, he knew that the two young men had followed him.

Truly he was God’s chosen one! And now he was going to be bound and locked up in his own house!

When the two brothers came up with the rope, they had to clear a path through the crowd that had gathered in the street outside the house. The people at the back craned their heads inquisitively to see what was going on inside. They caught glimpses of the brothers tying his hands behind his back, and then fastening the rope ends to some bolts they had driven in between the stone blocks of the two gable walls of the house, all in accordance with Ezekiel’s loud instructions.

“And now you must close the shutters! And then you must go out and lock the door after you!”

The multitude remained in the street for a while after the shutters were closed and the door locked, in the hope that something spectacular would happen. But nothing did, everything was quiet, not a sound was heard from inside Ezekiel’s house, and after an hour people began to wander back to their own homes. Over the next few days, however, the town’s attention was focused on his house, people passed it when they could, there were always people gathered outside the door, and at regular intervals one or other of them would press an ear up against it to form an opinion about what was happening inside. Each time, though, the head would be shaken as it turned to the others gathered there: nothing.

“Nothing?”

“Nothing. Not a sound.”

Not until the third day did something happen. Two children were playing in the dusty street outside the house when suddenly a voice sounded from within.

“SO SAYS THE LORD GOD!” shouted the voice. “He who would hear, let him hear, but he who will not, need not! For they are rebels!”

The children looked at one another wide-eyed. Then they ran to the door and pressed their ears to it.

“SO SAYS THE LORD GOD!” came the voice again.

One of the youngsters knocked on the wood several times.

It went quiet inside.

The children looked at each other again.

“We must tell someone,” one whispered.

“You go,” whispered the other. “And I’ll stay here and keep watch.”

A few minutes later the boy came back with the brothers who’d tied Ezekiel up. Rumors about the occurrence had spread fast; when the door was unlocked, about twenty people had already gathered outside.

Ezekiel stared at them wild-eyed. He stood just as they had left him, thoroughly trussed up with rope that ran across the room. His legs and the insides of his thighs were brown with feces, his white tunic stained with urine.

“So says the Lord God!” he shouted again. “You have not followed my commandments, or obeyed my laws. You have not even lived according to the laws of the neighboring peoples! And so the Lord God says: See, now I come against you!”

The two young brothers went up to him cautiously, fearful in case he let fly at them. Even though he took no notice of them, and they realized he was in some kind of trance, they were still careful not to make any sudden movements as they undid the rope.

Once he was free, he raised up his hands in front of him and looked at them, twisted them for a moment in the air, as if he didn’t properly understand what it was he had in front of him, and lowered them again. Then he went across to a corner of the room and fetched a large tile, and without a word dragged it out to the front of the house. Before the eyes of the anxious Judeans he crouched on his haunches in front of the tile and began to draw on it with chalk.

“What’s he doing?” people whispered.

“He’s drawing something,” came the answer, also whispered. “It looks like a city. .”

“It must be Jerusalem!” said a few, and soon the idea had spread to everyone standing there. Ezekiel was sketching Jerusalem on a tile. And once the code had been cracked, they clearly saw the various landmarks. That must be the city wall, that the Hananel Tower, that David’s City, that the Upper City, that the palace, that the temple.

When the city had been drawn, Ezekiel rose and scraped a little sand from the street with his hand, which he placed in a narrow, finely shaped earthwork around the drawing. Then he walked about picking up pebbles for a while. When his hands were full, he placed them like troops outside the earthwork. Next he went inside the house, and there were a series of chopping noises, which were explained when he reemerged with a sword in one hand and eight broad wood splinters in the other. He laid the sword on the ground, and put the eight splinters between the stones outside the earthwork: these were the battering rams. Finally he brought an iron griddle from the house, and stood motionless so long, with the griddle between himself and the city, that several of the onlookers lost interest in the performance and left.

But those who remained were rewarded, for when Ezekiel finally put down the griddle, he took the sword and began cutting off his hair and beard. With the help of a balance, he divided the cut hairs into three equal piles, as the Lord had said he should. One pile he put in the middle of his drawing of Jerusalem, and set fire to it so that it burned up with a crackling sound. The second pile he cut up with his sword into small pieces and placed outside the earthwork, and the third he threw up in the air, and his hair was spread to the winds.